33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask |
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33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask
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by Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Sales Rank: 18643
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Discount: 34 %
List Price: $25.95
$17.13
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on 4-19-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Hard Cover with 320 pages
Published by: Crown Forum July 10, 2007
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0307346684
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0307346681
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
From Publishers Weekly
Woods (The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History) argues that the History lessons schoolchildren learn are ideologically driven distortions aimed at producing citizens who believe that big government is good and big business is evil. He aims to set the record straight. He says that Americans have been fed propaganda about the origins of Social Security, which is nothing more than a tax. Indeed, Woods thinks nothing good came out of the New Deal, which, far from lifting the U.S. out of the Great Depression, actually prolonged the nation's economic woes. Much of the book touches on issues of race: desegregating public schools hasn't really helped black children; racial discrimination is not the main cause of the gap between blacks' and whites' salaries; and Martin Luther King Jr. was a dangerous radical who sought an immediate, palpable improvement in blacks' material condition, a vision he thought could be achieved by racial quotas and socialism. Blacks, according to Woods, should model themselves not on King, but on an enterprising if oft forgotten 20th-century self-made man, S.B. Fuller. (July 10)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Spread among current events and constitutional law, Woods' 33 questions extend his criticism of liberal viewpoints on American History elaborated in The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History (2004). Ideas that the Constitution is a "living" document, that the New Deal ended the Depression, and that foreign aid alleviates world poverty are some nostrums the author critiques, while others are more populist. Should you heed, for example, historians' rankings of presidents? Perhaps as measurements of the History profession's ideological tilt, avers Woods, who holds that such lists favor big-government presidents and slight little-government types such as Cleveland and Coolidge. Woods is also concerned that the concept of states rights is viewed negatively, so several questions probe its con-law pedigree and the assertion that it, more than slavery, is what the South fought for in the Civil War. Alighting rather disconnectedly on "the biggest unknown scandal of the Clinton years," George Washington Carver's scientific significance, and Social Security, Woods is at least consistent in maintaining that Americans' historical awareness is befogged by myths. Marketed through conservative media, the assertive Woods will generate requests. Taylor, Gilbert
Reader Reviews
As historian Thomas E. Woods, Jr., notes on page 78 of this important new book, "the modern state trains its citizens to think" in a certain way. Whether the issue is the role of the State in regulating the economy ... how racial minorities can succeed ... or how we should judge success or failure in a politician, a narrow range of opinions has been deemed acceptable by Establishment Left and Establishment Right. Questions that could lead to different conclusions are ones "we're not supposed to ask." Tom Woods is out to change that. Picking up where he left off in "The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History," the author again plays Manolete to the Establishment's sacred cows. But he's after more, I think, than just a tasty barbecue. Some of the questions here are ones people are actively discouraged from answering the "wrong" way -- questions about the causes of the Civil War, the influence of unions, the effectiveness of desegregation as a tool for improving education, or the validity of PC mythology about native Americans. Other questions confront conventional wisdom so solidly entrenched that the questions don't occur to most people in the first place: what if the Depression wasn't a failure of capitalism, and what if the New Deal didn't save us? But the most interesting questions, I think, are the ones you have to look deeply into American history even to discover the context of the questions, so thoroughly have they been buried under official neglect: Why does the Whiskey Rebellion matter; what does the "elastic clause" really mean; or what if the presidency wasn't meant to be what it is today? At first, I found parts of this book problematic: the chapters are long enough to intrigue (or outrage), but often not long enough to convince beyond the traditional "reasonable doubt." At a few points, the author stopped just short of diving into some Hoppean or Spoonerian analysis of constitutional issues. And yet, entire books have been written on most of these questions -- many of which Woods cites in his text and endnotes. I suspect the author's deeper goal (beyond the above-mentioned barbecue) is less to provide the answers than to urge readers to begin pondering the questions. If rescuing the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions or the true meaning of "states' rights" from the Memory Hole are "essential to a proper understanding of American history" (p. 157), intellectually honest people should be able to work out the implications. Another objection I can see is the so-called "realist" argument that whether or not we ask these questions, the expansion of federal power is a fait accompli --- one the American people by and large seem content with. (The author himself gives us political science in one lesson on page 202: "Enforcing federal supremacy always comes first.") Given that "we" seem to want Social Security, OSHA, and a "national drug control policy," what does it matter what James Madison intended by the commerce clause two centuries ago? But if Woods' presentation of American history is true, then it *matters* that it is true: ideas, after all, "have consequences," and as Father Abraham might have put it, a house built on lies cannot stand. Ask yourself: if the facts presented here are true, would it change how you think about government, politics ... and America itself? And if so, then what?
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